Joint Faculty Intranet

Professor Sacha Stern wins largest ever grant for A&H

8 February 2013

Professor Sacha Stern (Head of the Department of Hebrew and Jewish Studies) has been awarded an ERC (European Research Council)
Advanced Grant for a research project entitled 'Calendars in Late
Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Standardization and Fixation'.

This
grant, to the value of €2,499,000, is the largest ever achieved in
the Faculty. The five-year project was launched on February 1, 2013,
and will employ a total of five research associates. Two research
associates still need to be recruited, in the fields of (1) Greek and
Latin epigraphy and (2) Hebrew codicology.

This project will study the evolution
of calendars in late antique and medieval societies. This complex
process was closely related to politics, science, and religion, and
contributed to the standardization of culture in the ancient and
medieval worlds.

The project will be divided into several research
areas: the seven-day week in the Roman Empire, late antique
comparative calendars (the hemerologia), medieval Jewish
calendar disputes, and medieval monographs in Arabic and Hebrew on
astronomy and the many ancient and medieval calendars.